Dead Man's Grip (23 page)

‘Popping?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What’s
popping
is that I want you to take this evening’s briefing.’ Grace grinned, clocking Branson’s even sharper than usual suit – grey with purple chalk stripes. ‘That’s if you haven’t got an appointment with your tailor.’

‘Yep, well, I need to make you one, get you some new summer gear.’

‘Thanks, you did that last year and cost me two grand.’

‘You’ve got a beautiful young fiance´e. You don’t want to take her out dressed like an old git.’

‘Actually, that’s why I need you to take over from me this evening. I’m taking her out tonight. Got tickets for a concert at the O
₂
in London.’

Branson’s eyes widened. ‘Cool. What concert?’

‘The Eagles.’

Branson gave him a
sad bastard
stare and shook his head. ‘Get real! The Eagles? That’s old git’s music! She’s an Eagles fan?’

Grace tapped his chest. ‘No, I am.’

‘I know that, old-timer. Seen them in your house. Can’t believe how many of their albums you have.’

‘ “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It Easy” are two of the best singles of all time.’

Branson shook his head. ‘You’ve probably got Vera Lynn on your iPod, as well.’

Grace blushed. ‘Actually I still haven’t got an iPod.’

‘That figures.’ Branson sat down, put his elbows on Grace’s desk and stared him hard in the eyes. ‘She’s just come out of hospital and you’re going to inflict the Eagles on her? I can’t believe it!’

‘I bought the tickets ages ago, for a fortune. Anyhow, it’s a quid pro quo.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘In exchange, I’ve promised to take Cleo to a musical.’ He gave Glenn a helpless look. ‘I don’t like musicals. Give and take, right?’

Branson’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me.
The Sound of Music
?’

Grace grinned. ‘Don’t even go there.’

Tooth drove from the Avis section of the car park, made a circuit of the airport and drove in through the entrance marked Long Term Car Park. Instead of following the directions to Today’s Parking Area, he headed off, steadily driving up and down the lanes of cars already parked there, looking for other Toyota Yaris models that were of the same year and colour as his own.

Within twenty minutes he had identified five. Three of them were parked in deserted areas, out of sight of any CCTV cameras. Working quickly, he removed each of their front and rear licence plates and put them in the boot of his car. Then, paying the minimum fee, he drove back out of the car park and headed towards the Premier Inn, one of the hotels close to the airport perimeter.

There he requested a second-floor room, one with a view of the hotel parking area and the main entrance. He favoured second-floor rooms. No one outside could see in and should he need to leave in a hurry, via the window, that was a survivable jump, for him. He also told the woman receptionist he was expecting delivery of a FedEx package.

He locked the door, placed his bag on the bed, opened it and took out the brown envelope Ricky Giordino had given him. Then he moved the wooden desk in front of the window, climbed on to it and taped over the smoke detector on the ceiling, before sitting in the purple chair and staring out and down. The hotel had taken trouble over the parking area. Well-trimmed bushes, low ornamental hedges, round wooden tables, a covered smoking shelter. Seventy-two cars, including his small dark grey Toyota, were parked in neat rows. He remembered the make, colour and position of them all. That was something he had learned from his days in the military. You remembered what you could see. When some detail, however small, changed, that was the time to be concerned.

Beyond the far end of the lot was a tall red crane and beyond that the dark hulk of a building rising in the distance with the words GATWICK NORTH TERMINAL near the roofline in large white letters.

He made himself an instant coffee and then studied once more the contents of the envelope.

Three photographs. Three names.

Stuart Ferguson. A stocky man of forty-five with a shaven head and a triple chin, wearing a green polo shirt with the words ABERDEEN OCEAN FISHERIES in yellow. Carly Chase, forty-one, a passably attractive woman, in a chic black jacket over a white blouse. Ewan Preece, thirty-one, spiky-haired scumbag, in a dark cagoule over a grey T-shirt.

He had addresses for the first two, but only a phone number for Preece.

He took out one of his cellphones and inserted the UK pay-as-you-go SIM card he had purchased at Gatwick Airport a short while ago, then dialled the mobile phone number.

It answered on the sixth ring. An edgy-sounding man said, ‘Yeah?’

‘Ricky said to call you.’

‘Oh yeah, right. Hang on.’ Tooth heard a scraping sound, then the voice again, quieter, furtive. ‘Yeah, with you now. Difficult to talk, you see.’

Tooth didn’t see. ‘You have an address for me.’

‘That’s right, yeah. Ricky knows the deal, right?’

He didn’t like the way the man sounded. He hung up.

Then he glared up at the smoke detector, feeling in need of a cigarette. Moments later his cellphone rang. The display showed no number. He hit the answer button but said nothing.

After a moment the man he had just spoken to said, ‘Is that you?’

‘You want to give me the address or you want to go fuck yourself?’ Tooth replied.

The man gave him the address. Tooth wrote it down on the hotel notepad, then hung up without thanking him. He removed the SIM card, burned it with his cigarette lighter until it started melting and flushed it down the toilet.

Then he unfolded the street map of the City of Brighton and Hove he had bought at the WH Smith bookstall and searched for the address. It took him a while to locate it. Then he pulled out another phone he had with him, his Google Android, which was registered in the name of his associate, Yossarian, and entered the address into its satnav.

The device showed him the route and calculated the time. By car it was forty-one minutes from the Premier Inn to this address.

Then on his laptop Tooth opened up Google Earth and entered Carly Chase’s address. Some moments later he was zooming in on an aerial view of her house. It looked like there was plenty of secluded garden around it. That was good.

He showered, changed into his fresh underwear and made himself some more coffee. Then, returning to Google Earth, he refreshed his memory of another part of the city, an area he had got to know well the last time he was here, the port to the west of Brighton, Shoreham Harbour. Seven miles of waterfront, it was a labyrinth with a large number of places where no one went. And twenty-four-hour access. He knew it as well as he had known some enemy terrain.

Shortly after 11 a.m., the room phone rang. It was the front desk, telling Tooth that a courier was waiting with a package for him. He went down and collected it, took it up to his room and removed the contents, placing them in his bag. Then he burned the receipt and delivery note, and everything on the packaging that revealed its origins.

He packed everything else back into his bag, too, then picked it up and took it with him. He had already prepaid the room charge for a week, but he didn’t yet know when he would return, if he returned at all.

Carly did not start the week in a good frame of mind. Her only small and bleak consolation was that, with luck, this week would be marginally less shitty than the previous one. But with the client settling into the chair in front of her now, Monday was not starting on a promising note.

Ken Acott had informed her that the court hearing was set for Wednesday of the following week. He was going to try to get her Audi released from the police pound as soon as possible, but the car was badly damaged and there was no likelihood of it being repaired within the next ten days. She was going to lose her licence for sure, hopefully getting only the minimum of one year’s ban.

Clair May, another mother with a son at St Christopher’s with whom she was very friendly, had taken Tyler to school this morning and would bring him home this evening. She had told Carly that she was happy to do this for as long as was needed, and Carly was grateful at least for that. It had never occurred to her quite how lost she would be without a car, but today she was determined not to let it get her down. Kes used to tell her to view every negative as a positive. She was damned well going to try.

First thing this morning she had looked into contract taxi prices, Googled bus timetables and had also checked out buying a bike. It was a fair hike to the nearest bus stop from her home and the bus schedule was not that great. A bike would be the best option – at least on days when it wasn’t pissing down with rain. But with the memory of the accident scene still vivid in her mind, she could not contemplate cycling with any enthusiasm at this moment.

Her client’s file was open in front of her. Mrs Christine Lavinia Goodenough. Aged fifty-two. Whatever figure the woman might once have had was now a shapeless mass and her greying hair appeared to have been styled in a poodle parlour. She laid her fleshy hands on her handbag, which she had placed possessively on her lap, as if she did not trust Carly, and had a look of total affront on her face.

It was rarely the big things that destroyed a marriage, Carly thought. It wasn’t so much the husband – or the wife – having an affair. Marriage could often survive problems like that. It was often more the small things, with the tipping point being something really petty. Such as the one the woman in front of her now revealed.

‘I’ve been thinking since last week. Quite apart from his snoring, which he flatly refuses to acknowledge, it’s the way he
pees
at night,’ she said, grimacing as she said the word. ‘He does it deliberately to irritate me.’

Carly widened her eyes. Neither her office nor her desk was grand or swanky in any way. The desk was barely big enough to contain her blotter, the in and out trays, and some pictures of herself and Tyler. The room itself, which had a fine view over the Pavilion – and a less fine constant traffic roar – was so spartan that, despite having been here six years, it looked like she had only just moved in, apart from the stack of overflowing box files on the floor.

‘How do you mean,
deliberately
?’ she asked.

‘He pees straight into the water, making a terrible splashing sound. At precisely two o’clock every morning. Then he does it again at four. If he were considerate, he’d pee against the porcelain, around the sides, wouldn’t he?’

Carly thought back to Kes. She couldn’t remember him peeing during the night, ever, except perhaps when he had been totally smashed.

‘Would he?’ she replied. ‘Do you really think so?’

Although Carly made her money for the firm in dealing with matrimonial work, she always tried to dissuade her clients from litigation through the court. She got much more satisfaction from helping them negotiate resolutions to their problems.

‘Perhaps he’s just tired and not able to concentrate on where he is aiming?’

‘Tired? He does it deliberately. That’s why God gave men willies, isn’t it? So they can aim direct where they’re pissing.’

Though she was tempted to say it, instead Carly advised, ‘I think you might find that hard to get across in your hearing.’

‘That’s coz judges are all blokes with little willies, aren’t they?’

Carly stared at the woman, trying to maintain her professional integrity – and neutrality. But she was rapidly coming to the conclusion that if she was this cow’s husband, she would long ago have tried to murder her.

Not the right attitude, she knew. But sod it.

Tooth wasn’t happy as he turned into the residential street and drove over a speed bump. It was wide and exposed, with little tree cover. It was a street you could see a long way down, on both sides, without obstruction. A hard street to hide in. A little parade of shops and mixture of semi-detached houses and bungalows. Some had integral garages, others had had this area converted into an extra front room. Cars were parked along the kerb on both sides, but there were plenty of free spaces. There was a school some way down and that wasn’t good news. These days people kept an eye on single men in cars parked near schools.

He saw the house he had come to find, number 209, almost immediately. It was directly opposite the shops and had an attached garage. It was the house where he had been informed that his first target, Ewan Preece, was holed up.

He drove past, continuing along the street for some distance, then meandered along various side roads, before returning to his target street five minutes later. There was an empty space a short distance from the house, between a dilapidated camper van and an original cream Volkswagen Beetle with rusted wings. He reversed into the space.

This was a good position, giving him an almost unobstructed view of the house. It seemed to be in poor repair. The exterior paintwork had once been white but now looked grey. The windowsills were rotten. There were black trash bags in the front garden, along with a rusted washing machine that looked like it had been there for years. People ought to have more self-respect, he thought. You shouldn’t leave trash in your front yard. He might mention that to Preece. They’d have plenty of time to chat.

Or rather, Preece would have plenty of time to listen.

He opened his window a little and yawned, then switched the engine off. Although he had slept on the plane, he felt tired now and could use another coffee. He lit a Lucky Strike and sat smoking it, staring at the house, thinking. Working out a series of plans, each contingent on what happened in the coming hours.

He pulled out the photograph of Ewan Preece and studied it yet again. Preece looked an asshole. He’d recognize him if he left – or returned to – the house. Assuming the information was correct and he was still there, in number 209.